


Saltwater Sweet

by Wren_Song



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: 68th Hunger Games, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Soldiers, District 1, F/F, F/M, Forced Prostitution, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-10 00:22:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wren_Song/pseuds/Wren_Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’ll say to her: never forget what they did to you, and never let them know you remember." - 'Daughter', Nicole Blackman</p><p>After the 67th Hunger Games' express example, the Career Districts of Panem put forth especially charming and orthodox Volunteers. For Onyx, District One, Female of the 68th Hunger Games, this means she has to play closer to the chest than in any usual Games.</p><p>Meanwhile, her mentor, Gloss, has to struggle through his first attempt at mentoring any Tribute.</p><p>A.K.A. District One is more complicated than 'pretty! spoiled!'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: You just need to remember

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Fixed to a Star](https://archiveofourown.org/works/655081) by [lorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata). 



“When I was pregnant with you I started taking sugar in my tea,” her mother said, drawing her chubby little toddler fingers through raw sugar in the tiny brown bag it comes from market in, “I never did that before. That’s why I named you after it.”

It’s not the kind of story anyone tells like a legend. Sugar doesn’t notice or care. She’s happy splashing in sooty puddles and showing off her bright green rubber boots to the other foundry kids. Springtime is the best time of the year, because nobody cares how much they squirm in the mud and play messy games. She loves watching birds build their nests and lay their eggs, and she’s always very, very careful to protect them—so much so that once she broke a boy’s nose for teasing them.

This year they are starlings in the rafters of the falling down barn at the edge of town, and Sugar lures Gleam with her to watch the babies hatch. Gleam is a good boy, as far as boys go. He’s nice, and Sugar likes him.

“See?” She whispers, cuddling up against him. “Look at how cute they are.”

“They’re kinda gross,” Gleam says, dubiously, and Sugar elbows him hard in the ribs.

“They get cuter. You just have to be patient.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, shut up.” 

One of the babies pecks her way out of her shell (Sugar always thinks they’re girls) and lies panting on her side, leading Sugar to breathlessly cheer her on even while she shoves Gleam’s face into moldy hay. He struggles up in time to find Sugar in an indulgent mood and watching the chick fluff out her feathers, clasping Sugar’s hand where no one can see.

“Wow,” he breathes, tightening his hand around hers, and Sugar can’t help but agree.

They run home together, hand in hand, and Sugar recites the chick’s valiant struggle over her mother heating up dinner. She doesn’t care that it’s reheated—her mother is the best cook in the neighborhood, as far as Sugar cares, and she always loves the spicy food her mom comes up with. She draws wild circles in blue on brown bags, curve after curve, and shuts her eyes tight for glass precision. She has better ideas in her head than in her eyes: she knows about oceans and mountains and meadows in her heart, even if she never sees them.

And that’s okay. It’s fine. 

“Baby,” her mother says, and her voice is—

Her voice is something Sugar doesn’t understand.


	2. Recruitment: Don't hold yourself like that, you'll hurt your knees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein children make poor choices.

Physical Education is, by far, Sugar’s favorite class. 

She loves school anyway, because since they live on the edge of a Wealth sector the school has to pass muster for broadcast. Everyone knows that things in One either have to be hidden, or they have to shine. Every morning she comes from the functional grime of their hidden industrial pocket to the comfortable warmth and gleaming hallways of school. They get hot water for a whole five minutes in the _showers_ every morning, and the school washes and presses their uniforms for them. As clean as her mother keeps their home, Sugar never feels quite as happily pure there as she does here.

Part of why she loves Physical Education is that they get to take another shower after class. This one is cool, because that’s better for their skin and hair, and anyway, who wants a hot shower after exercising for an hour? Maybe the lazy kids who never do anything, but she’s not happy sitting still. In most of her classes that’s a problem, and Sugar spends time in the corner at least once a week, but in Physical Education that’s all reversed. 

“Time!”

Sugar collides with the wall at the end of the gym and sucks in huge, burning lungfuls of air, resisting the urge to press her face against the slick white paint or slide to the floor. Her whole body is shaky and wrung out, but she knows she did more suicides than any other eight-year-old. She bets she did even more than most of the nines or tens, too, but they’re in a different class, so she won’t know until the schoolwide scores are up. She turns herself around and, with effort, manages to make jogging back to the middle line not seem as hard as it is.

“I hate you,” Gleam chokes when she kneels next to him, glaring at her under the dark fringe of his jagged bangs, “You’re such a show off.”

“Jealous,” she whispers, keeping her head demurely bent. The class forms a neat line this way, and their teachers like that. It’s not like when they were little threes running around the Pre-Learning Centre. Even last year they didn’t have to be so promptly uniform. It makes Sugar feel like a big kid, finally. She reminds herself to straighten her back and hold still—she shouldn’t even be talking, but Gleam started it. That’s not her fault.

He should know better. He’s already on probation, and Sugar doesn’t know what she’ll do if he gets expelled. She can’t watch out for him if he ends up at the foundry school with the washouts and the ones who didn’t even pass their entrance exams. But he’s not getting expelled today, even if he talks, since he’s actually good at Physical Education. Just not as good as she is.

No one is as good as she is, and it sends a little, secret shiver of joy into her stomach, stronger than exhaustion or trembling muscles. She’s _not_ a show-off, though. It’s not showing off if you’re just being as good as you can be.

“Very good, class,” Damask says, and Sugar lets the warmth in her belly radiate through her whole body, because she could swear their teacher is looking at her when she says it. “Free movement for the rest of the period. You can use the dodgeballs if you want to. Make sure you shower properly after—there’s an assembly after lunch. I don’t want to have to send anyone home.”

No one can disguise their excitement, although Sugar is pretty sure most of them are just interested in the dodgeballs as they get up and head for the equipment bin. She stands up and shakes herself out, reaching down to pick up Gleam’s hand and tug him with her. Even though he hates her for at least the rest of the day he weaves his fingers through hers and goes without complaining.

“I wonder what the assembly’s about,” she says, keeping her voice down. Free movement doesn’t mean they should start yelling—good manners are always important, no matter what you’re doing. 

“Who cares?” Gleam shakes his head. “It’s probably something boring.”

“What if it’s someone from the Capitol, though? Or a propo? Or a _Victor_?”

“Why would it be any of those? It’s never something like that. I bet it’s a hygiene lecture since Faux had lice.”

“You’re horrible,” Sugar says, wrinkling her nose, “That’s not nice to say. It’s not his fault.”

“I didn’t say it was his fault.” Gleam knocks into her and she nudges him back. “But he did have them, and they were gross. They’re probably going to put up a big picture of them—”

“Stop it.”

“—right up on the main screen.” Gleam waggles his fingers at her like a bug’s legs, and Sugar lets go of his hand and shoves him. 

“Children,” Damask calls over, in warning, and Sugar bites her tongue. She didn’t push him that hard. It’s just that sometimes Gleam really needs to understand that he should be quiet when she tells him to be.

“You’re no fun,” she says, instead of pushing him again, and it comes out meaner than she wants it to. Gleam shies away, more hurt by that than the shove, and she grabs for his hand again to squeeze it reassuringly.

“At least I’m not scared of bugs.”

“Let’s just get a ball, okay?”

She could tell him it’s not that she’s scared of bugs, but she doesn’t know exactly how to explain it to him. She isn’t scared, though. In her house she’s always the one who catches the spiders to put them outside. Sugar doesn’t let herself be scared of anything, no matter how much she doesn’t like it. Someone has to be brave enough for her mother and Gleam put together. (It’s not completely true, but Sugar knows that if you tell yourself something enough you can make it so, like how she can pretend that not eating breakfast on school days is fine.)

For the rest of the day she can’t concentrate, too busy wondering what the assembly will be about. She gets her knuckles rapped in Mathematics because she’s doodling in the corner of her worksheet instead of solving problems. It hurts less than it wakes her up and puts her back on task. She can draw at home as much as she wants.

At lunch she sits with Gleam and Flicker, who is her second favorite friend. Flicker has the same dark hair that Sugar does, the same dusky skin, but her eyes are dark where Sugar’s are bright. Neither of them look at all like cream-pale Gleam, though, because their families have always been industrial while Gleam’s parents—but that’s something Sugar is fairly sure she’s not supposed to know about, and she’s definitely not supposed to talk about it. Sometimes people get moved around in One, that’s all. It’s all for the greater good of the District. And if you can move down, you can also move up, which is why it’s so important that she works hard to stand out. Sugar wants to live where all the buildings are like her school. 

“I saw them moving broadcast equipment into the gymnasium,” Flicker says, picking through her salad for the tomatoes—fresh, tiny tomatoes, and Sugar wonders how they get them so small and new, “I forgot my gym shoes and had to go back for them.”

“I told you it was going to be something good.” Sugar elbows Gleam in the ribs. “Otherwise they’d just use the school system.”

“I don’t even know why you care.”

“I don’t know why you _don’t_. I thought you’d at least be happy to be missing Literacy.”

“We’re just going to have to do extra work tomorrow.” Gleam frowns at his lunch tray like it’s the one that’s offended him, and Sugar honestly has no idea what’s wrong with him today. “It’s like you believe all of the things they make up.”

And even Gleam knows that’s going too far, so he stops, eyes wide and lips pressed together like he just bit into something bitter and unexpected. Flicker tenses too, leaning away, but Sugar digs her nails into his leg under the table. 

“Gleam,” she hisses, low and insistent. It’s not a big mistake, not really—but everybody knows the teachers listen in at random to the students, and Gleam is already borderline. 

“I just—I don’t feel good,” he says, lamely, and when no one appears to ask Gleam to step out with them for a while Sugar unfastens her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe you should ask to go home, after the assembly,” Flicker suggests, a little tremulously. “If you’re sick they’ll give you a pass.”

“Maybe I should.” He pushes his tray away from him and shakes his head. 

“They have apple juice today,” Flicker says, and Sugar could kiss her right on the mouth. “I like it better than pineapple. Why do they even make pineapple juice? It tastes funny.”

“I like it.” Sugar smiles at her, and that’s all they talk about until the bell goes. She notices that Gleam still has food left, but there’s nothing she can do about that now. It does make him seem sicker—and maybe he actually is sick, she’s not a nurse or a mother. They file out in an orderly fashion when their year is called, two by two, and by the time they get to the gymnasium Sugar has forgotten all about Gleam’s big mouth, because the people on the school stage are wearing the blue and gold of the Academy. She’s only ever seen them in passing before, on the tram or at the market in the Wealth sector, and she’s amazed at how beautiful they are this close. One of the great things about being an eight is that they get to kneel almost at the front of the whole school, just behind the sixes and sevens. It’s a struggle not to lift her head before they’re told to look.

“Students,” the principal says, into a microphone that glints in the track lights, “Today you’re going to have a presentation on a very special opportunity. I expect you to pay full attention to what our guests have to say, especially since they came all the way out here just for you.”

“Thank you.” The woman who gets up to speak has long black hair that falls to the small of her back, and Sugar tries to imagine how long that would take to wash. Her own hair, like almost everyone else from industrial, is cut to a bob. “We come from the Academy for Exceptional Individuals, which you may or may not have heard of.”

Sugar bites her lip. Everyone knows what the Academy is—but they’re not supposed to, she remembers. Even so, she wishes she’d just skip this part. 

“We’re a school that provides special instruction to a select group of students, with a focus on leadership, athletics, and charm. Our graduates have a one hundred percent placement rate in prestigious positions throughout the District, and sometimes even in the Capitol itself.” The woman pauses, scanning the crowd, and Sugar tries to will herself taller. “If you succeed at the Academy, you can succeed anywhere.”

“Now, most years we rely on referrals,” the man she’s with says, stepping smoothly to her side and taking over the microphone, “But every once in a while we have recruitment drives, like this one, that are open to anyone interested in applying.”

Sugar, like half the room, sucks in a shallow breath.

“We’re going to put on a short video about the Academy now, and next week we’ll come back to interview all of those who have signed up. Remember, signing up doesn’t guarantee anything but a chance to get in—most applicants are rejected. I do promise that our process is fair, and we _will_ give every applicant due consideration. I’m Jet, and my partner’s name is Pyrite. I hope you enjoy the video.”

Of course they do. It’s short, unspecific, and meaningless—but the Academy is more beautiful inside than Sugar even imagined, as gorgeous as anywhere in the Capitol, and all the students are smiling and perfect. She watches in rapt focus as a blonde girl executes an acrobatic routine without mussing a single strand of hair, as a tall boy dives from a dizzying height into a pool that’s bigger than their entire gymnasium. They all wear immaculate white; she can’t imagine dirt even daring to go anywhere near them. 

At the end of the assembly Sugar is first in line for her year to take a permission sheet, darting ahead of one of the Wealth sector kids to get there. She hugs it to her chest over her rapidly beating heart that’s going almost as fast as it did after the suicides. The rest of the day is a blur, because she keeps thinking of the piece of paper in her bookbag and what it could do for her. For once, she’s not the only one who can’t focus in class, and by the time they get to Practical Skills the teacher gives up halfway through and tells them they can go home instead of identifying metals. 

 

“Are you really going to try?” Flicker whispers, when they’re sitting on the tram in their dingy everyday clothes—there’s a Peacekeeper at the front of the car, and nobody wants the Peacekeepers paying attention to them, even if they’re not doing something bad.

“I want to go,” Sugar whispers back, flattening the permission sheet on her lap, “I could get in. I could.”

“Your mother won’t let you sign up,” Gleam protests, and Sugar snaps her head around to glare at him.

“Yes, she will.”

“No.” He shakes his head, but she can see his knuckles whitening on his bookbag, so she can be almost sure he’s just saying that, and he doesn’t know. “Mine wouldn’t.”

“You’re just saying that because you couldn’t get in anyway.”

“I don’t want to.” He glances at the Peacekeeper, then leans in closer to her, serious and pale. “Sugar, people die in the Games.”

She almost laughs in his face, but there’s something so solemn about him that she can’t, so instead she says: “Not everybody who goes to the Academy Volunteers.”

Sugar isn’t thinking about the Hunger Games, though. She’s thinking of the fountain they showed in the video with real live fish swimming in it, and how she would never have to work in the foundry where accidents happen almost every week. She’d never have to skip breakfast again. When she grew up she could go anywhere, maybe even to the Capitol. The idea of going into the Games is too big—and it’d be eight years away, anyway, which was forever.

“But you’d have to learn how to use weapons,” Flicker chimes in doubtfully, “And hurt people.”

“Just for pretend, though. It’d be like—more Physical Education. I’m not scared.” Sugar twists to smile reassuringly at her, because Flicker is what her mother calls ‘all heart’. It’s not like Gleam, who’s almost definitely jealous. Flicker isn’t signing up because she’d never be able to handle it, but Sugar is pretty sure she could. If she can watch people come out of the foundry with their skin melted off and not throw up she can handle fighting pretend fights.

“You’d have to go live there.” Gleam brushes his foot against her own, and oh. That makes sense. “We’d never see you. You’d forget all about us and never come back.”

“I’d _never_.” Sugar is relieved that she’s not going to have smack Gleam across the back of his head when they get off the tram. “If you’re worried about people picking on you—you could just say your best friend is in the Academy, and I’d come back and beat them up. I promise, I’ll visit all the time.”

“No.” Gleam gathers up his things as the tram rolls to a stop outside the gates, his head down and voice oddly thick. “No, you won’t.”

“Gleam.” He gets up and makes for the door, and Sugar doesn’t understand what’s going on but knows it’s not good, so she hurries to get her own things together and follow him. But they aren’t the only foundry kids on the tram, so she loses him in the crowd for a few seconds, until the gates open and he takes off running.

“Gleam!” Sugar starts after him, but Flicker grabs her elbow.

“What’re you doing?” She demands, shaking Flicker off.

“His father is home,” Flicker says, apologetically, and Sugar freezes up. “It’s not a good day. I think—maybe we should just leave him alone.”

“Okay.”

“I should get home. My little sister is probably back from Pre-Learning already. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”

They split off at that, joining the general throng of kids tramping down the ashy streets as the heavy metal gate slides shut behind them. Sugar sticks her hand inside her bag to make sure she can still feel the thick, glossy paper there. The notebooks they have for school have whispery thin recycled pages that tear if you forget not to put too much pressure on them, and everything is double-sided. And the Academy can just give paper like this away for nothing.

It’s not that living in the industrial sector is so bad. She’s seen all the educational propos about other Districts, especially the double digit ones, and she knows how lucky she is to live in One. No one starves here, not ever. Little kids like her get to go to school instead of working. The lights always turn on and the water is always clean. One of the first things she ever learned was that if hiding half the District meant they got to keep things like that, it was worth it.

They also have the Academy, and the Academy makes the people that make her District matter like their artisans make the things that the Capitol loves them for. It isn’t only the Volunteers, the ones who save everyone else year after year, or the Victors who show all of the best parts of them. Everyone who comes out of the Academy goes to live in the Wealth sectors with diamonds in their hair, where Capitol people come to vacation even more than to Four. They can have any kind of career they want, as long as it’s beautiful.

Sugar could draw. 

But that’s too brave to think about yet, even for her. So she puts it carefully out of her mind and hurries home, her thoughts miles away from the practical grey buildings that rise up all around her. 

There’s not really a point to hurrying, since her mother won’t be home for hours yet, but Sugar decides to put that time to good use. She arranges the permission sheet on the kitchen table first, pinning it in place with a piece of slag they use as a paperweight, and then switches on the television. Usually, she doesn’t watch much of it. This counts as studying, though. Since it’s spring they’re not doing much about the Games, but there is a fashion show on one channel.

By the time her mother makes it home it’s dark outside and Sugar has decided that, no matter what, she will never, ever get things implanted in her eyes. She bounces off the floor at soon as she hears the key in the lock, switching off the television and smoothing down her hair. Gleam’s idea that her mother will say no is crazy, obviously, but it still makes her guts coil unhappily. 

“Hi, baby,” her mother says, tired but smiling, and Sugar throws her arms around her waist and hugs her tight. She smells like chemicals and smoke, which isn’t nice, but it also makes Sugar feel safe and warm. Her mother feathers her fingers through Sugar’s hair until Sugar lets go.

“I made tea,” Sugar says, like she always says, because this is what they do when her mother comes home: they have tea and they eat what her mother cooked on her day off and packed away for the rest of the week. She’s still not old enough to handle the oven by herself, but the kettle is relatively safe.

“You’re a treasure.” Her mother bends over to undo her boots while Sugar pours them two mugs. She parcels out her namesake from its brown bag carefully, since it’s expensive, and makes sure she puts her mother’s chipped blue mug in front of the permission sheet. Part of her wants to rush it, but that’s not fair. Anyway, it’s better as a surprise. 

“How was work?”

“It was all right. We topped quota.” Her mother settles down at the table with her and wraps her hands around the mug, sighing as the warmth creeps into her fingers. “How was school?”

“We had an assembly,” Sugar says, but already her mother is pulling the paper across to her and—frowning? That can’t be right.

“What is this?”

“It’s for the Academy.” Her mouth is dry. “They’re—it’s open recruitment. They said.”

The seconds drag down her arms like fingernails. 

“No.” Her mother’s face is hard and strange, and Sugar doesn’t understand how she could say that.

“It doesn’t cost anything.”

“That’s not why you’re not applying.” Sugar watches in confusion and dawning horror as her mother pushes jerkily away from the table and holds the paper away from herself like it’s rancid. “You’re not old enough to understand, but—when you are, you’ll see. You don’t want this.”

“Mommy,” she says, and she hates the whine in her voice, but what is she supposed to do? “I’m not scared, and—I wouldn’t get hurt.”

“Yes. You would.” And her mother sounds like Gleam. She sounds like the conversation is over, and Sugar hasn’t even had a chance to plead her case. She sounds like a door shut in her face, and Sugar doesn’t cry, ever. But her eyes are pricking with hot, frustrated tears now, because she _wants_ —she wants to wear white and live in a beautiful place, she wants to go somewhere that people will reward her for all her energy instead of putting her in a corner, she wants to be special. 

Now she won’t be, because her mother hates her and never wants her to be happy.

“This isn’t fair,” she breathes, shaking in place.

“Sweetheart,” her mother says, and tries to put her traitor hands on Sugar’s face, but Sugar jerks away.

“I could do it,” she insists, “I could. I’m the fastest in my whole year, I’m smart, I want to. We could move away from here and you’d never have to go to work again.”

“It’s not…I know you could.” Her mother kneels down in front of her and takes her hands; Sugar lets her touch her this time. “You could do those things. But you don’t understand what—the Academy changes people, baby. It’d make you into someone you don’t want to be. I know things are hard for you here, and I’m sorry, but you have to believe me when I say that this is better for you. That’s not a life you want.”

“I do.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. Look at me.” She squeezes Sugar’s hands. “Look at me.”

Reluctantly, Sugar does.

“This is one of those times that you have to trust me. All right? Everything costs. There are some things that cost too much, and I love you too much to let you…I love you. I know this doesn’t make sense right now, but it will. I promise.”

She sniffles, but: “Okay.”

“Okay.” Her mother smiles weakly, then rises up to rub the tips of their noses together. “Let’s have dinner and go to bed.”

Sometimes it’s easier to go along with a person to make them happy. Sugar knows that from school. So after her mother climbs into bed and falls into deep, still sleep, Sugar creeps out to rifle through the drawer they keep important documents in. She knows it’s not, exactly, the right thing to do—but she also knows that her mother is acting like Sugar is a baby, and she’s not. One day she’ll understand. So by filtered moonlight Sugar practices a loopy signature that looks about right, and in the morning she goes to school with a knot in her chest and a form in her bag.

It’s not something she can tell anyone, even Gleam or Flicker. Sugar feels too low and gritty when she turns the form in to even think about it. The whole week she wishes the showers lasted longer. She wonders when she’s going to get caught, because she knows she will get caught one way or another. But then the promised day rolls around, and even guilt can’t sour the way her pulse leaps when Pyrite personally pulls her out of class.

Whatever tests she was expecting, she was wrong. Pyrite is the one who touches her, while Jet scribbles notes on what she tells him. Sugar stays quiet, because neither of them have asked her to talk, and in school it’s important to only speak when called on. So she buries all her questions down the back of her throat and lets Pyrite move her like a doll. They have her do push-ups and sit-ups and run a timed lap around the gymnasium, and take notes. Pyrite takes her through a series of stretches, and they take notes. Sugar fills out a worksheet, and they even take notes on that. It takes a long time and she wonders how they’ll fit everyone in today.

None of it is hard, even getting her blood drawn, and maybe some of the puzzles they had her solve. She doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. Maybe Gleam is right. Maybe eight is too young and they’re just humoring her—but then why would it take all this time? 

“Now,” Jet says, and she wants to see what he’s writing almost more than she can handle, “There’s one official thing left to go over. Your permission form.”

It hits Sugar for the first time that there might be consequences bigger than corner time for faking her mother’s signature. Jet’s tone is distant and precise, Peacekeeper-cold, and this was a mistake from the start. Maybe if she just confesses now—

But she thinks about the girl doing acrobatics, and a fountain full of fish. The way her mother will have to let her go once she sees that Sugar was able to get in after all and it didn’t cost her anything. 

In District One people learn how to put on a good face early. 

“Is there something wrong with it?” She asks, and she puts her mind far away from the truth so her voice doesn’t tremble. 

“Who signed it for you?”

“My mother.” Sugar doesn’t know what the look he shares with Pyrite means, but she wants this so much. She has to make them believe her. Her mother will lie for her, if they call—or maybe they already did, and they know for sure, they’re just trying to trip her up. That wouldn’t make any sense, though. They can’t know, or they wouldn’t be bothering with her.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” She can see it if she focuses: her mother’s hand around a pen, the pen on paper. It can be real if she tells herself it is, and then they’ll stop asking and it’ll be okay. Also, if he makes one more note she is probably going to start screaming.

“All right.” He closes his book, and Pyrite ghosts her fingers—accidentally?—across Sugar’s shoulder as she goes to join him behind their table. “We just need to note the relationship in our file. Now, Sugar. For this next part I want you to be completely honest with us. Nothing you say can get you in trouble, I promise you. Why do you want to go to the Academy?”

She feels dizzy even though that makes no sense, but it’s okay. They believe her (maybe, they maybe believe her, she doesn’t understand what’s going on but she does know that there is something bigger and more complicated than what they’re saying with their words, it’s in their eyes and the way they sit and it’s like spiders, it’s something she doesn’t have words for yet) and now they just want her to tell them the truth.

They don’t believe her, but it doesn’t matter; they do believe her, but then why would he ask twice? And this, she realizes, is the reason the other tests seemed easy, because the biggest part of success in One is not how strong or fast you are. It’s how well you can put on the right face. If that wasn’t true, her honest mother wouldn’t be poor.

“I want to bring honor to my District,” she says, and her voice is clear and ringing as a chime, “I know I can do anything the Academy wants me to do. I’m fast and I’m pretty and I’m smart. And I want this more than anybody else you’ll see today, so you should take me.”

It seems like the right answer, because Pyrite smiles and says: “Stop by the school office for some candy on the way back to class. You’ll hear from one way or another within the week. You did well.”

 

“What do you think?” Jet asks, turning to his partner as the little girl leaves a little too fast to pull off the smooth escape she must have had in mind. 

“Well, I like that she kept the lie up. She’s not very convincing, but she’s eight. I’m impressed that she tried at all. Forging the signature in the first place was why she even rated.” Pyrite leans back and stretches, graceful even in that. It’s one of the things he admires about her. “And I believed what she said about wanting it more than anyone else we’ll see today.”

“She’s brave,” Jet acknowledges, “But it worries me, too. Where did she learn that?”

“Oh, _darling_.” Pyrite rolls her R’s like a Capitolite, and Jet suppresses a snicker. “You’ve never been to one of these schools before. They train them out of speaking their minds early. That’s why these recruitment runs are a good thing, you know. It keeps the program from stagnating.”

“All right. I trust you. Besides that, she seems competitive overall. There’s a good physical base to build on, and according to the school records she’s reasonably healthy.” Jet flips through his notes, although he doesn’t really need to. “Her parentage is…did you pull anything on the father?”

“No. It doesn’t matter, though. She looks like her mother. See?” Pyrite stops his flipping and points at a picture that could, indeed, be a ten-year-old version of the girl they just saw. “As long as her genetic tests come back clean I don’t think it’s worth worrying about—and if a defect hasn’t shown up by now, she’s probably not going to have anything disqualifying.”

“Speaking of her mother…”

“That’s not going to be our problem. Assuming we do recommend her, which I’m leaning towards. You?”

“I’m for it.”

“I’ll write her up tonight.” Pyrite’s fingertips linger on the photo of the girl’s mother, eyes speculative and soft. “We should put in for a name change, too. Sugar won’t work for her.”

“It’s too common,” Jet can’t help pointing out, because he may be almost twenty-five but Pyrite still makes him feel like the kid who wants to get called on by a favorite teacher, “Consumable.”

“Exactly.” She smiles at him, all teeth and no joy. 

He does not, does not think of what they recommend these children for, and he does sleep through the night and he does not contemplate the fact that after escort his job has the highest suicide rate in District One, and if he tells himself these things he can make it through the day.


	3. Reaping: Standing on the sidelines waving and grinning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The 65th Hunger Games trigger something in District One; the 68th Hunger Games demand a particularly orthodox Tribute.

The thing about being a girl in the District One Academy is that they have to do it harder and faster and better than any other Career. Across the board it’s seventeens and eighteens who go in, five out of six. On rare occasions they’ll send someone younger, but only if they’re truly exceptional.

And then there’s District One, Female, who is never older than sixteen, and sometimes she’s not even that. So the entire program is scaled to stopping at sixteen, which means they have to hit certain milestones earlier than the boys. 

When Finnick Odair wins the 65th Hunger Games at the unheard of age of fourteen there isn’t a single girl in the Academy over twelve who doesn’t think to herself: _so what?_

_So what_ , they’ve all killed—and if not as many people as Finnick Odair, by the end, it’s more than he’d had going in. _So what_ , he’s gorgeous and charming, which means nothing in a crowd of people just as beautiful but with far more camera practice. _So what_ , he’s talented with nets and traps and stealth as much as any weapon, they diversify too.

District Four might be eager to dig hooks into their pretty prodigal Victor, but District Ones can spot shoddy imitation product. That’s always a problem with Four, though, the District that can’t decide if it wants to ape One or Two from year to year, forever out of step. At least One never sends in Tributes half-finished.

_So what if—_

Finnick looked older than fourteen in the Games when he was stripped to the waist and covered in blood that wasn’t his own, burnished hair gleaming in the sunlight as his trident flashed into Chroma again and again, and while that was happening—that had been better than how they drape Finnick in a loose, translucent shirt that shrinks him back to the size of a boy, his cheekbones dusted with shimmer.

The trainers turn off the television when his final interview is over and send their charges to bed early. For a week, there are no nighttime drills. It’s an order from the Director herself, who watched Finnick wink at the Capitol when Caeser told him they were all just _smitten_ and shattered her wineglass against the white leather of her office walls.

Hatred and other such ugly emotions are dealt with like wine stains. They disappear. The Director calls on Flare and Precious in the middle of the night.

“At least it takes the pressure off ours.” Precious voices the bleak, unkind truth that the rest of them won’t. But in the Victor’s Village people are allowed to be a little more honest. “Ever since we brought Gloss home it’s been busy. The Four will divert their attention.”

No one will say Finnick’s name. Ones don’t believe in bad luck, but they do believe in depersonalization. 

“We should have them meet.” Flare is pacing with a glass of bourbon, his rakishly cut dark hair all askew from how many times his hands have been in it, and the Director has to curb the instinct to snap at him for it. He’s not her trainee anymore. He hasn’t been for ten years, and still, under stress she wants to reassemble his armor for him. “Make a point of passing on the Victor torch, you know?”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll make some calls.” The Director jots it down, because bourbon always has a somewhat unpredictable affect on her memory. “Anything else?”

“The next time I see a mentor from Four,” Precious says, with the brilliant, sunny smile that won her a place on the stage instead of the Director, “I’m going to tell them to be proud of themselves.”

After that, there isn’t much to say. They stay up late hammering out the details of how they’re going to save with one hand and condemn with the other, until the bourbon has run low and Precious trails off to call Gloss and Cashmere’s Capitol handlers to tell them that yes, they’ll be back before Gloss and Cashmere are in the morning, not to worry. Flare comes to the couch where the Director is cradling her head, which feels far too large and overstuffed, between her hands.

“I can’t—” he starts, low and hurt, and she shakes her head—a dangerous proposition on a few levels. She can’t make this promise yet, she knows she can’t, but—

“You won’t have to.” She turns to look at him, this beautiful creature she helped to build. 

When he kisses her, it’s not about sex or attraction; sex in District One, especially for people like them, is both casual and attached to a thousand nuances of affection. This is for comfort, for forgetting, for penance. 

The Director dreams, but not of Finnick, who is someone else’s problem now. She dreams of Chroma, of her melting brown eyes framed by honey-gold hair just so, her sweet, high voice echoing a question that the Director can’t answer for her. 

The next day no one would be able to tell she stayed out all night. The Victors are gone, sped back to the Capitol—one of the many advantages of being so close is that they can make these day trips, back and forth, that they’re never more than two hours away. The leash is short, for being so fine. The Director goes through the day’s reports like it’s any other day, not the one after a Crowning. 

“Ma’am?”

Technically, the Director has an open door policy from ten to noon. In practice, almost none of the students ever make it that far. If they can get past the three rows of bureaucracy between their quarters and her office, if they can argue they need the time spared from training, she knows it has to be something worth her time. So she looks up at one of the fifteens.

She recognizes her, of course. The Director knows every student in the Academy by name and face, by their aggregated scores that follow them from their first year to their last. It’s partly professional, but partly—well, the professional part is what matters, so she invites the girl to come in with the subtle inclination of her head. The Director bends back to her reports for a few minutes, allowing her to stand at attention in front of her desk in silence.

“What do you need, Hue?” 

“I took a poll of the other fifteens last night,” Hue says, without expressing surprise that the Director knows her name—the trainees know that about her. It’s part of the only promise she can make to them: each one of them matters, at least to one person. “We were discussing the Victor from Four, and we’d like to make a petition.”

“Go on.”

Hue smiles at the Director, a slow, sleek smile that she instantly attaches the word _cat-like_ to: “We don’t want to lose our opportunity to Volunteer before the year even starts, ma’am. None of the thirteens this year have what it takes. We weren’t sure if it was going to be fashionable to send younger Volunteers after that—but then we thought, we’re District One. We make fashions, not follow them. I know that—”

“Stop.” The Director closes her notebook and pins the girl with a cold glare; Hue keeps on smiling, bright and flawless. “Go back and tell the others that we aren’t going to mimic District Four in _any_ capacity, and that for doubting that they can look forward to whatever punishment your trainers see fit to assign. Now return to your dorms.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hue chirps, and turns smartly on her heel to march out.

The Director knows that Hue didn’t poll any fifteens, although if anyone had they probably would have come up with that. No; one of the first reports on her desk this morning was of a disturbance in the thirteen dorms, and the Director cues up the footage again.

“I’m not ready,” a little red-head whimpers—Lumen, the Director recalls—swaddled in blankets on the dorm floor, “I’m not. I can’t.”

The other girls hover at the walls, watchful and uncertain, until the door opens quietly and another child leads Hue in by the hand. (Hue, fifteen, has a reputation among other trainees as a soft touch.)

“What’s going on?” Hue crouches down in front of Lumen, but addresses it to the rest of the girls.

“She had a nightmare,” the girl who brought her in reports, and then lowers her voice, embarrassment obvious, “And she wet herself.”

“I can’t go.” Lumen shakes, hiding her face in her crossed arms. “I’m the smallest one here, they can’t—I don’t want to, not yet, how could they make me—”

“Shh.” Hue is stripping the sheets from Lumen’s bed with quiet efficiency; when that’s done, she leaves them in a pile on the floor and returns to her. “They won’t do that to you. Not to any of you. All right? I’ll talk to the Director tomorrow.” 

Lumen bursts into renewed tears. The Director stops the tape at the point where she throws her arms around Hue’s neck and hides herself in her glossy brown hair. 

People in District One don’t make promises with any expectation of being able to keep them, but Hue made it all the way to the Director. She made it to her and lied, knowing that they both knew she was lying, which makes it not a lie. It makes it an audition. The Director calls up her file on her computer and reviews it, thoroughly. Then she pours herself another glass of wine. Makes a few calls.

The District One, Female in the 66th Hunger Games is sixteen-year-old Silk, the girl who was Hue but had her name changed to avoid comparison to Chroma. She is all warm, lovely arrogance, polished to a sharp sheen, and the night she dies the Director takes a long, hot bath. 

_So what if that was me?_

In District One, there are no Finnick Odairs. It’s a cold, unpleasant thing to hang onto for comfort, but it’s all they have. They make their children into monster-whores, year after year, but they never, ever send them in not _knowing_. They take their innocence away themselves, and only from some of them, so the rest grow up forgotten and well-fed. Untouched. 

_Not you,_ the Director tells them, sinking underwater and holding her breath, _not you._

****

***

“Are you scared?”

The night before the Reaping the Volunteers get a party. It’s a taste of what they’ll have if they win, the parts of their life that won’t be working to bring praise to their District. There’s no alcohol or drugs, of course, but they stayed up late with the rest of Academy and got to hold court. Onyx has ruffled the hair of every child under thirteen, or at least that’s what it feels like. 

“Not very.” Onyx nuzzles under Lumen’s jaw, planting a kiss there. 

They aren’t girlfriends, not like some of the other girls are. There’s nothing officially wrong with that, as long as the girls are careful and discreet. Almost all of them need surgery after training anyway, to replace what exercise usually tore on its own. Onyx doesn’t like girls that way, though. She doesn’t like boys that way either. It’s one of the reasons, one of the many, that she’s the one who had her token presented to her by a wide-eyed fifteen and not Lumen. 

Not Lumen. It’s one of the few personal things that Onyx holds to herself, something she’s allowed to keep because it won’t impact her performance and will never have to come up in the Capitol. They’re keeping Lumen to train the littlest girls. Ever since the task assignment last week Onyx has been able to achieve the proper mindset, because she knows that of every girl in her cohort she is the only one who will be able to handle what she’s committed to.

It hums in her bones like the electric shocks she endured for her fourteen year exam, sharp and yet numbing. The trainers have been one on one with her all week, making notes on her every move—it’s not too late until the Reaping itself to substitute, everyone knows that, but Onyx is going on that stage. The closer it gets the more that twists and twists in her, desperate and greedy—it’s going to be her, the best and the fastest and the prettiest and the one who wants it more than anyone else, it’s _her_. It’s her, and not anyone else.

“I am,” Lumen says, and she can afford to be afraid because it was never going to be her up there. By fourteen, everyone could roughly assess where they would end up, and Lumen’s athletic ability combined with only moderately good acting skills slanted her towards trainer already. Onyx is graduating from sixteen with two prep workers, four tour leads, three trainers, and six escorts. It’s a good year, really, a year of high retention for District One needs. (The parallel year sixteen isn’t spoken of, isn’t thought about.)

“You’re silly,” Onyx says, with a little giggle, and rolls over. “Go to sleep.”

The trainer by their bunk bed takes notes.

****

***

In the morning, Onyx is escorted to Preliminary Prep by two Peacekeepers. She keeps her head up and smiles dazzlingly at everyone they pass, because this is an honor, an honor and an example.

In District One Prep, all they do is wax her, style her hair, and do her make-up. She hasn’t had scars for a month, because they polish all the sixteens that way. She strips naked without hesitation and submits to the process, watched by a cluster of thirteens who are being tested for aptitude in appearance selection. 

“What dress works best for her coloring?” The trainer quizzes, pointing to three hung up on a nearby rack as Onyx breathes through strips of her hair being torn out. “It’s the pink. You have to consider eye color as much as anything else, and a pink works with her blue-green. It’ll set off her eyes and complement her hair and skin. Fill out your worksheets on how you would dress and style her now.”

“Thank you,” the boy brushing her hair whispers when he pretends to inspect a possible split end, and Onyx closes her eyes and smiles even wider. Then she stops smiling, because it’s time to apply her make-up. After that she’s as neutral and placid as stone, sinking into the meditative state her trainers have taught her for exact moments like this. She feels what’s happening to her body, moves her arms and legs as directed, tilts one way and then another, but none of it goes deeper than her fleshy wrappings.

Thirty minutes before the Reaping she looks into a mirror. The girl that greets her isn’t a surprise, because Onyx has been going through cycles of make-up and prep for three years, but she is pleasantly satisfactory. They can’t go to Capitol levels, of course—not for lack of skill, but for appearance’s sake—but Onyx’s smoldering eyes are off-set by her shimmering pale pink summer dress, exactly like the trainer said. She crosses her legs one way and then the other, judging how her strappy white high heels emphasize her calves, and then tilts her head to flash her token earrings.

“Thank _you_ ,” she says, sweetly, and then she goes to the special car that she and Diamond have been assigned, just for today. There are Peacekeepers in the back with them, but the whole thing is so large that it fosters a sense of—not privacy, exactly, they haven’t had that since they came to the Academy in the first place, but it is breathing room.

“I like your shirt.”

“I like your dress.”

That pretty much exhausts their current acceptable conversational topics, so they just stop there. 

In the Reaping crowd Onyx keeps her face carefully schooled to impassivity, but still. In an array of gems, she shines brightest; this is deliberate, they’ve muted the other girls to make her stand out, and this will be true for Diamond as well. They’re special even before they step up.

Ray Jeunesse is eighteen, which means that Onyx is not going to be an Amethyst, and with that clutched to her she calls out: “I Volunteer!”

Diamond’s called name is fifteen, and this year is not going to be like last year, so they can stop holding their breath. In Diamond’s slanted smile she can see the relief, like he must be able to read in her own. Whatever else happens, this won’t be a complete disaster.

It’s a Reaping that’s good because it’s typical and safe. Onyx can tuck her legs underneath her in the Hall of Justice without too much concern. She’s not confident, because that would be a mistake. Instead, she’s assured of her training, of this Reaping, of what she’ll end up one way or another. Whatever happens, she has it in her not to shame District One. 

Onyx isn’t expecting anyone to visit her. When the Peacekeepers knock on her door before she needs to get on the train, she’s startled, but she doesn’t let that show. Instead she answers the door, looking out curiously but not with shock.

“Do you know him?” A Peacekeeper asks, gripping the boy in question by the elbow, and—oh. Oh, oh. 

“Let him in,” she says, and pulls the door wide.

Technically, anyone is allowed to greet the Tributes before they go to the Capitol. Technically, anything that happens after this is off-camera—one of the rare instances that a Tribute’s time is their own. But Onyx doesn’t believe any of that, so she stares at him from as far across the room as she can step back without making herself look afraid.

“Hi,” he says, and Onyx is three again, she’s six, she’s eight—she can’t be any of that, because of who she’s become, but there he is. 

“Gleam,” she breathes—and when did he get this tall, when did his nose get broken? When did dark hair turn black? When did he become someone who wasn’t her best of friends anymore?

“S—” he starts, but then: “Sweetie.”

Onyx hears her first name, though, as sure as if he said it. She digs her nails into her palms because—no, this isn’t a thing that she should be doing, and if she really cared she would have told the Peacekeepers to take Gleam away.

But.

But it’s been eight years and he still somehow cared enough to turn up.

It’s been eight years and he remembers her name, and Lumen couldn’t do this to her. Her trainers couldn’t do it either. But Gleam is here, with an ever so crooked smile and bruises under his eyes, and he came here even though there was no reason to ever—

“Oh, no,” he says, and he catches her hands in a tight squeeze, “Don’t.”

She’s not. 

He kisses her wrist, gentle and watchful, and it’s then that she tightens her jaw like some kind of child. She knows better than this. She is better than this. Gleam tries to steady her against a chest broadened by years of work and Onyx remembers who she was when she loved him, in an infantile, selfish way.

“Hi,” she says, and if something is breaking in her it’s nothing new, “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” 

They have two minutes left. There are two minutes for her to ask how he knew to come here today, how he recognized her, why he cared enough to show up, why he fought to see her at all, and none of these are questions that will take two minutes to ask and answer. 

“I know,” he says, pushing her away—because he understands, he’s not stupid, and Onyx has so much she wants to tell him but she can’t, she can’t, “That you have a token. But I brought this for the train, okay? Because—I remember you. We remember you. And—come home.”

He folds something into her hand, and she wants—she wants things that she’ll never be able to name, let alone have, and then she decides that what she needs is to keep him as safe as the fifteens and fourteens and thirteens that she’s probably going to die for. Coming back is a larger hope than any District One will claim. 

“Tell my mother I love her.” Onyx stays at a distance and does not, does not let herself shake, does not let herself be moved. “And I remember. I remember that—”

Gleam darts in and murmurs: “Stay good.”

“Go.” She’s nodding, but not for any particular reason. “Don’t make them pull you away. That looks bad.”

“Duh,” he says, and she hates him for coming. She hates him for doing this to her right before she has to leave. She hates him for reminding her of what she is. She loves him, he hates him for remembering. She hates him, she loves him for caring. There are so many things she wants to say to him and she has no time for a single one. 

“Eggshell,” he calls over his shoulder, and then it’s like he never existed in the first place.

Onyx gives herself ten seconds to feel it. Then she sits down. There’s no space to let something like that happen to her, not here, not without a plan. Her sole visitor is consigned to a part of herself even deeper than Lumen, a part where the chemical, smoky smell of his body doesn’t ache in her, where the shock doesn’t matter.

By the time she gets on the train she’s sure this is another test and that she’s more than capable of stepping up to it. Why else would Gleam have been able to appear at all? It’s obviously orchestrated, part of their future trajectory. She crosses her legs and smiles at Diamond, because that’s the smartest thing to do right now.

 _Stay good_ , but what does that even mean? Nothing to her, just to start with. Nothing to anyone else. Stay good? It’s such a broad request that she could reasonably fit almost anything inside of it. Gleam was tutored, she can tell that by now. It might seem a little excessive to test Volunteers after the Reaping—but on the other hand, Onyx could be replaced at an instant by at least two other girls who look enough like her to pull it off. Anyway. They know she’s better than something so sentimental.

“Well.” Her mentor looks at her without even the shadow of a smile, empty and blank, but that’s all right. “Looks like we have a good year to start with.”

His sister says something bland and unnecessary; all of this is all right, it’s fine, it’s okay, it’s nothing Onyx will want or need later on. It’s sound and a lack of fury. It’s emptiness and bluster. None of this matters. All of this matters. 

Diamond is holding her hand and Onyx is somewhere past all of this already, except:

“We are going to get one of you out of this,” Cashmere says, sullen and toxic as lead, “But which one is up to you.”


	4. The Parade: I don't want your future, I don't need your past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Onyx struggles with questions of worth.

Onyx is too well-trained to suck air through her teeth, but still. It’s an unsettlingly confident statement this early, the kind of thing that they’re never supposed to say because it tempts the Gamemakers to turn them into liars. 

It must be different when you’re a Victor, Onyx rationalizes. But still. She digs a perfectly shaped pink nail into Diamond’s palm and waits for one of their mentors to elaborate.

“Cash, you’re being melodramatic.”

“I’m being realistic.” Cashmere tosses her golden hair over her shoulder and makes for the sidebar, skimming her fingertips over fluted bottles. Onyx remembers watching her claw a boy’s intestines out with those pretty hands, and it’s still slightly jarring years later to see them doing anything so delicate. “Should I tell them that they probably won’t have to kill one another?”

“You won’t, by the way,” she adds, glancing back at Onyx and Diamond, “It almost never comes down to two from the same District unless you set that up yourselves. But I want you to prepare for the possibility all the same.”

“She’s right about that.” Gloss settles on a couch across from them, ankle propped up on his knee as he spreads his arms over the back of the couch—it’s like watching a cat stretch, she thinks absurdly. “I _was_ thinking we could start with something less grim. So. How was the Reaping?”

“It was a good one,” Diamond says, perking up at being asked a direct question, and Onyx would roll her eyes if she wasn’t upset with herself for not jumping on it first. Gloss is supposed to be _hers_. It’s not going to help her if Diamond impresses him first. “As far as the ones I’ve seen, at least. Onyx did a great job.”

She deftly undoes her hand from his and doesn’t think about driving the stem of Cashmere’s wineglass through his throat. She knows him. Diamond is trying to help her, in his puppy-dog way, but he’s made her sound like a child already. She can see it in Cashmere’s smirk as she sits next to her brother, nestling in the arch of his arm with her legs neatly crossed.

“How are you so sure you’ll get one of us out?” Onyx has to reclaim ground, because she’s not going to be relegated to the baby of the two of them even if Diamond is two years older. So if that involves making them notice she has a mouth on her, that will be whatever it ends up being. He doesn’t get to speak for her.

“Because District One is overdue for a Victor, and it’s us, little girl.” Cashmere laughs throatily, swirling the tiny splash of white wine around the bottom of her goblet, and Onyx is glad she’s too dark for a faint flush to show. 

Last week, the lead trainer for the sixteens took her aside right after she was informed of her selection. Onyx wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but of course she went without question through the winding gardens of the Academy to sit on the bench next to the koi pond.

“Gloss and Cashmere aren’t much older than you,” Aaliya said, her hands folded in her lap and eyes focused on the swirling, multi-colored fish, “But you’re going to respect them, because they’re Victors. They’ve seen and done more than you can understand.”

“I know—” Onyx started to speak, thinking that the pause meant she could, but Aaliya cut her off with an impatient upheld hand.

“You don’t know. You’re going to go in thinking that you know what you’re doing, but you don’t. That’s why they’re there. I’m telling you this so you don’t have to learn the hard way. We’ve trained you as much as we can, but whatever Gloss decides for you is what you’re going to do, even if it doesn’t make sense. Even if it contradicts everything we’ve told you. You have to trust him.”

“I will.” She looked at Aaliya earnestly, trying to get her to read her honesty from her eyes, but Aaliya wasn’t looking at her.

“You’re an excellent pupil,” her trainer said, softly pitched under the pond’s burble, “I believe in you. Bring it home.”

Onyx had all but floated back to the dorms after that, tucking herself into bed and holding Aaliya’s voice to her like a talisman. Praise in the Academy was always sparse and qualified; this was the first time she could remember any of her trainers saying something so baldly complimentary.

And now, of course, she’s disappointing them.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Gloss says, unsmiling, “It was a good question.”

Even though Gloss isn’t openly approving it’s still Diamond’s turn to be uncomfortable. Onyx doesn’t take any pleasure in it, though. Diamond is one of her favorite eighteens, the kind who would actually stop if he broke a girl’s arm instead of grinding the bone. But she wants this, so she can’t feel sorry for him either. Instead, she picks his hand up again, teasing out the resistance in his fingers. They don’t have to be cruel to one another. At least not yet, and maybe not ever. Cashmere is right: it almost never comes down to two from the same District, unless they’re actively competing against one another.

“Let’s watch the Reapings,” Cashmere cuts in, smoothly, flicking on the television screen situated across the train car, “Two should be going live about—there.”

One of the many privileges attached to being first among the Districts is that they get to watch the Reapings as they happen, just like people in the Capitol. Some Districts are more orchestrated than others, and the propo about the Dark Days tends to overlap between close Districts, but the Reapings proper flicker across their screens as they happen. Onyx pays careful attention to each. 

The pair from Two are nothing like the Victor from last year, tall and brassy and beautiful. The girl in particular seems compelling, so Onyx makes sure to remember Sillar. Three fields two fifteens, wide-eyed and unsure. Four’s Volunteer pair this year outshine the ones from the last, lithe and graceful as they climb to the stage. Aileen and Drift. Five, six, and seven don’t show anyone especially promising, but Onyx has learned from Johanna Mason, so even the sobbing girl from six merits her attention.

Eight’s girl is nothing out of the ordinary, but then they call a shivering, tiny boy from the front, and Onyx catches her breath. He must be twelve, but he looks ten, at best, and Onyx is in the middle of resolving to kill him as swiftly and surely as possible when a voice rises over the murmurs of the Reaping crowd.

She can’t remember the last time Eight had a Volunteer, although she should, and if she was back in the Academy they’d shock her for that forgetfulness. Still, it’s been a long time. Any year that there’s an unusual Volunteer tends to stick in people’s minds, and she’s quietly grateful to Blakeley Collins. He probably doesn’t know what he’s doing—but she does. It’s taking some of the weight off of the twelves from last year, giving the commentators something to chew over instead of that contrast. It won’t eliminate it entirely, but it’s going to help. Anything to talk about instead of last year will do wonders for her chances.

If she has to kill him, she’s going to honor what he’s just done for her. 

The rest of the Reapings are comfortably non-descript. There are pretty Tributes, and strong ones, and ones who look a little too calm, but there’s nothing Onyx isn’t equipped to handle in some way or another. The last traces of her fear unwind and dissipate. She can do this. She has every advantage in the world, and she can do this. 

“Any thoughts?” Gloss asks, when it’s all over, and he’s looking right at her. Onyx is, for the second time in as many hours, grateful that she doesn’t blush too visibly unless it’s severe.

“There are no twelves,” she blurts, “It’s not like last year. They’re giving us a chance to—restore our image. Right?”

Gloss smiles—he actually smiles, and then he whispers in his sister’s ear, making her laugh. Onyx watches the two of them, their easy, unfettered closeness, and she wonders if that’s what it’s like for every Victor. But that’s ridiculous. The Victors aren’t all siblings. Even so, she watches them and feels envy stir from a place she’s trying to suppress. 

“And we’re the most attractive pair,” Diamond observes, which is probably a more cogent thing to notice, “So we have that to our advantage right away.”

“You’re both right,” Cashmere says, and it seems like she intends to say more before the train drags to a halt. 

“Well.” Gloss stands up, helping Cashmere up with him, and nods at the far door on the train car. “We’re stopping here until the morning. You’ve both been told about the train schedule?”

She and Diamond nod in near-unison.

“All right. The other Victors will be arriving shortly after you wake up. Until then—do whatever you want. Eat whatever you want. Or drink. We won’t tell if you don’t.” Gloss winks, and Onyx is reminded that he’s only six years older than she is. Cashmere even less. It’s a warm, gentle conspiracy wrapped around her shoulders, because of course the other Victors will know; still, it’s being given free reign by a hero, and Onyx thrills to it even as their mentors depart the dining car.

Diamond waits until they’re gone, but then: “You little _bitch_.”

“‘Onyx did a great job’,” Onyx mimics, high-pitched and obnoxious, digging her elbow into his side, and then they’re rolling around the floor as silently as possible. They’re good at keeping quiet, between the two of them, and by the time Diamond has her hopelessly pinned no one’s shown up. Onyx spits in his face, drawing out a scowl, and then he does the worst thing of all—

“No, no, no—” she twists helplessly underneath his hands, laughing so hard that it hurts, as he digs his fingers mercilessly underneath her arms.

“Say please!” Diamond is laughing too, blond hair falling in a tangled fringe over his forehead.

“Please!”

“That’s right,” he says, relenting, and helps her off the ground. Onyx knocks her forehead against his shoulder, part from playfulness and part from unsteadiness. “Aw, does the little baby have a boo-boo?”

“I hate you,” Onyx says, with no conviction, throwing herself ungracefully across the couch Gloss and Cashmere were occupying. Diamond grins, all heart-stopping and brilliant, but Onyx has seen this before. 

“We did it,” he says, lying down on the floor beside her couch, “We’re here.”

“I know.” She reaches down and tangles his hand up in hers again, thumbing the rough places she knows will be minimized by the prep teams tomorrow. But for today, they have this, and whatever else they can do within the confines of reason. “Don’t treat me like a child, though, all right? You don’t need to. That’s cheap. You’re already twice my size.”

“Thrice.”

“ _Twice_.”

“Whatever you say.” He grins up at her, one hand splayed across his stomach. “Gloss liked you anyway. I probably did you a favor.”

“Whatever you say,” she echoes.

Like Lumen, she doesn’t like Diamond that way. He’s not her boyfriend; it’s a badly kept secret of who he loved, and everyone knows he’s not over her at all. Diamond is just—Sheen, or at least he used to be. Diamond is someone she regrets taking in with her and wants there at the same time, because no matter what happens he’d never betray one of his own. If it somehow came down to them, Diamond would try to make it quick and clean. If it doesn’t come down to them, Onyx knows that Diamond would never hurt her.

That’s a weakness she holds very, very close, because she doesn’t want to know what would happen if Diamond knew that wasn’t returned. So she smiles at him, wide and guileless, as if this is her real face and not another edition for the camera. (She almost wishes the person she’s wearing now was who she is, because she likes this one, but that doesn’t matter.)

It’s still going to be at least twenty-two people that she has to worry about. As long as she remembers that, lying to Diamond isn’t so hard. 

“What do you want for dinner?” She asks.

They end up eating what they’re used to, only with a few frills. Spiced chicken breasts roasted over a fire. Steamed vegetables tossed with a little dark vinegar. Protein cookies flavored to match chocolate, as far as their naïve tastebuds know. Everything but water is cloyingly sweet, so they avoid it. It’s still the best meal Onyx can ever remember having. She’s tempted to lick her plate after the chicken and vegetables, but stops herself in case someone does happen to be watching. 

They go to bed early, still unattended except for a brief glance by their escort, Ramos. Onyx can tell that both of them suspect this is some kind of test, which makes her feel a little less paranoid. It’s smart to be alert when it comes to the Academy, but not to be insane. She’s curling up in soft pajamas and blissful thoughts of victory when the knock comes at her door.

“Yes?” She sits up, drawing her blankets to her chest even though there’s nothing to hide. And of all the visitors, she’s a little surprised at herself that Gloss rated so low in who might be expected.

On the other hand, _what?_

“How are you?” His voice isn’t slurred, at least not so Onyx can tell, but it sounds strained and strange. 

“I’m fine,” she says, and because she’s not sure what else to do, “How are you?”

He laughs, quiet and soft: “Great. You should be asleep.”

But even after he leaves, she thinks she can’t, not for the longest time. She was trying not to expect much of today, not really, but then people got themselves messily involved. She doesn’t like when they do that, not when Onyx can’t predict how it’ll go. 

Their mentors are unknown territory. Cashmere and Gloss have never done this before. She’s never seen them behind any tribute, never been able to see how they function managing a Victor. They’re new, and for all that she knows two older Victors are coming to supervise them it doesn’t help. Onyx twists her silky sheets up underneath her chin and stares at the panels of the wall across from her, pulse slamming in her throat like one punch after another. 

She can do this. She tells herself that as she falls asleep. She can do this; it doesn’t matter what gets in her way. She can win these Games and make it out breathing, and she knows she can, knows that she has to, knows that there is nothing else she can—

When the train lurches awake so does she, huddled on the floor with blankets wrapped around her head, and it takes a few furious moments to kick her way free. When she does she smoothes her hair back in the mirror and smiles, touching up with a tube of lipgloss generously left out for her. She changes into a matte blue-green dress but keeps the same shoes to traipse off to breakfast with, drawing some security from the height of the heels.

Onyx could almost convince herself that nothing happened from the way Gloss ignores her at breakfast, except that she’s been dosed with hallucinogens enough to be able to distinguish reality quite readily from fantasy. At least Mehrdad and Precious have turned up to join them, so Onyx doesn’t have to worry about leaning too heavily on Gloss. He-- _they_ have support, no matter what. 

Mehrdad and Precious are as different as Gloss and Cashmere are alike. While the siblings are pale and golden, Mehrdad sports skin the same color as Onyx’s, but with dark eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard. Precious is darker than most Elevens, her hair suspended in dozens of tiny braids. They both wear the signs of age, even under Capitol alteration. Onyx half-wishes—not for the first time—that she was a year older.

Then again, she’d probably be dead, if Amethyst was anything to go by. 

The truth is, even if she wishes for different mentors she doesn’t wish for a different year, because last year’s boy earned it doing things that probably cost him more than Onyx is willing to surrender. It hardly seems like he won at all, not with what he’ll have to deal with for the rest of his life. That’s not victory. It’s just survival.

(And a deeper, quieter truth is: she wouldn’t take that away from anyone, not Finnick or Johanna or Claudius. They tore their own ways out of the arena, and she respects that. She wants to be one of them. So, no. She’d never take someone’s crown away, even in her imagination.)

“Your stylists are Jannis and Aleksander,” Ramos says, in his clipped, easily mimicked accent, “We expect you to be on your very best behavior, as you’re very lucky to have such talented and experienced professionals working on you.”

Diamond rolls his eyes from across the table. Onyx keeps her head demurely down. The four people supposedly dedicated to bringing at least one of them home don’t seem to pay any attention at all. It must not be that important.

Once they’re finally allowed to cross off the train Onyx is swarmed by her prep team, a gorgeous and brightly colored flock of birds who whisk her off with excited whispers to Remaking. She sheds her dress and shoes like the nothings they are, but seeks out the most trustworthy prep woman to press her earrings onto—“They’re my tokens, so please, could you look after them for me?”

“Oh, darling, of _course_ ,” the woman says, and then they set to taking Onyx apart and putting her back together.

Scaeva, Varus, Aquila. Aleksander.

“I love working on District Ones,” Aquila trills, massaging foam through her hair, “It’s not a chore like some _other_ Districts I could name. It’s so nice that you have pride in yourselves.”

“You’re such a little doll,” Scaeva coos, dying her eyelashes dark enough to not need mascara for color, only length, “I think you’re even prettier than last year’s girl—and what a shame that was! I had such high hopes for her, I really did.”

“Gorgeous,” Varus murmurs, and brushes his hands over Onyx’s breasts more than he needs to.

“Hello,” Aleksander says, and Onyx could almost, almost, not at all cry when he drapes a robe around her shoulders, “Let’s have lunch, you and I.”

“Call me Alek,” he says, summoning up a plate of broiled meat and steamed carrots, “If you have to call me anything besides ‘adorable’, of course,” and when he mugs for her Onyx can’t help laughing, just a little.

“Thank you. I know I’m not that funny.” Aleksander—Alek is as green as impossible, children’s book grass, his eyes studded with silver and LEDs. But he looks and acts as if he’s careless of that, and he nibbles on the same food that Onyx does.

If Onyx lives, he’ll be her stylist for the rest of his life. If she dies, he’ll have to risk demotion. So there are some practical aspects. But there’s also something about the way he listens to her chatter about her prep team that—

“Varus won’t stay.”

“I didn’t—”

“I know you didn’t,” Alek says, frowning deeply, “That’s what I’m worried about.”

“Anyway,” he goes on, much more cheerfully, “How much do you like pink?”

Alek wraps her from elbow to wrist, knee to ankle in shimmering pink ribbons. Onyx holds her breath as he glues shimmering rose quartz from her throat down to her breasts, always careful to ask her permission before he went further. He wreathes her in a dress shorter and shinier than the one she went to the Reaping stage in, except this one is tied with a flat ribbon ending in a bow at the small of her back. He braids two strands of her hair back in thinner ribbons to keep black waves from her face, and she shivers under his deft fingers.

They have less than five minutes before the parade, and he places a flat platform in front of her and her gorgeous, impossibly bright smoky eyes.

“If you’re on heels you’ll fall,” he says, and Onyx has known him for less than four hours; he’s still the person she can believe most wants her to survive, if only for selfish reasons.

“Thank y—”

“After you win,” he says, shaking his head, “After you win.”

So Onyx goes to their snow-white chariot horses without any feedback; judging by Diamond’s stare, she doesn’t need it, so she climbs onto the platform set up for her with bare feet painted only a translucent pink. She digs her toes in just to feel something real and wooden underneath her, but otherwise she stands tall.

Watching the children around her she can’t really imagine what it’s like to be one of them. She can try to be charitable, but it doesn’t quite stick. Everyone besides the Twos and Fours wear the clothing of sloppy professionals who don’t really care, and Onyx feels genuinely sorry for them—that shouldn’t be what anyone has to put on a week before they die.

As the parade begins, none of it matters.

Jannis cloaked Diamond in contrasting cloth thoroughly, shielded in clinging black fabric that shifts every time he breathes. Next to Onyx’s stellar array and pinkish-glory he looks almost drab. While Onyx shines from ankle to hip Diamond is limited to the short-sleeved and short-legged jumpsuit Jannis has stuck him in. If Diamond wins, it’ll be a lovely contrast—but if he loses, it’ll seem worthless and sharp.

It shouldn’t be too much of a problem, sartorially wise, except for how restricted they are. The Fives and Nines draw some attention, but not enough to eclipse Onyx and Diamond in their stunning outfits, followed closely by Four and Two. 

The District Onyx is paying attention to, though, is Eight, who are costumed like idiot harlequins in multi-colored squares of incongruous fabric. Blakeley and Bias stand in matte, useless costumes that stitch them together as jokes. Still, Onyx watches them while the President makes his traditional speech, and Blakeley wears it with more pride than even the Fours.

She shouldn’t be picking Pack members before training, and she isn’t. But Blakeley is rating highly enough for her to pay attention when it does come to that.

Varus is gone by the time she climbs off the chariot, hand in hand with Diamond. The new prep team member is Calvus, a bluish, timid fellow. He pins back one strand of her hair and disappears, like he’s afraid of what could happen to him. Onyx considers reassuring him. Doesn’t. 

The evening sky is polished and perfect as she is.


	5. Day One: I was raised up to be admired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am alive! And updating!

On District One’s floor Onyx has to go back to tasteless, perfectly calibrated food, but first she looks at herself in the mirror and brushes her hands across her tight, flat stomach. When she closes her eyes she can still almost feel the roar of the Capitol crowd pounding over her skin, like her whole body had turned into a delicate, precise receiver.

She’s not stupid enough to think it’s love, but she does think _not yet_ , and who knows what that makes her besides optimistic. 

Well. It could make her an idiot, after all, but as long as she knows that she should be all right.

Onyx joins the dinner table in her parade outfit and the highest platform heels she could request from her wardrobe. She strides gracefully in them, for all that they’re impossible, because she’s been running in shoes just about as high since she was twelve. Not running as fast as she can in proper shoes, but still, running. 

“Well, look at you,” Precious says, but her tone is soft, not mocking. Onyx smiles shyly at her, because she is—she is one of the most perfect Victors District One has ever produced, if not _the_ most perfect, and that she notices Onyx at all feels like more validation than the Capitol has given so far. 

Diamond has changed. He’s lit up in a bejeweled white shirt with shimmering shoes and tight grey pants, and Onyx wonders if that means he’s getting ahead of her or not. He did make it out to the table earlier than she did, even with changing his clothes, and she curses her hesitation even while she sits down next to Gloss with a perfect smile.

“We were just talking about you,” he purrs, and she perks up, “We’ve decided on your angle. Lovely and poisonous.”

Onyx spears a head of broccoli and waits for him to elaborate.

“You’re naturally innocent looking,” Precious says, and _oh_ , oh, Onyx can barely keep her face on, “You have a lot of potential in traps and poisons. Brute force isn’t your game, and we don’t want you to be directly cruel. If you can seem naïvely vicious, that’s the best thing for you. Try to let situations that force your hand evolve.”

If Gloss is her mentor, Precious is her grandmentor, and Onyx is paying attention. 

“Diamond is the strong one,” Mehrdad interjects, “You should focus on tying the Pack together. You’re charming, you can do that.”

“Don’t be too aggressive,” Cashmere suggests, idly, “No one likes a bitch.”

Onyx slit a man’s throat when she was twelve and spit on his convulsing body.

“Of course not,” she says, brightly, “And thank you all for the instructions. I’ll take care of it.”

“That’s a girl,” Diamond says, falsely jovial, and Onyx lets him touch her because he’s not going to see the year turn. (And he’s Sheen, he’s a boy who could have been her friend, once, and she’s not a monster.)

There’s more after dinner. Onyx and Diamond split up to be tutored in exactly what, when, and how they’ll conduct themselves tomorrow; the why is sort of self-explanatory. Where is even more obvious. Onyx lets Gloss tilt her this way and that, Alek making notes in the back of the room. 

“Cute,” Gloss says, a little wonderingly, “You’re such a young looking thing. Are you sure you’re sixteen?”

“Of course I am,” she says, warily, because while she actually is he’s skirting treason to suggest the former practice of altering birthdays, making a younger girl seem older or an older boy seem younger. They caught District One sending a nineteen-year-old, once. That lesson Onyx had to learn from other children, not from teachers. They don’t talk about what happened to that boy. It’s like he never existed. He doesn’t even have a name.

“They’ll just eat you up,” he says, and if there’s a strange note in his voice Onyx is determined to ignore it. “So,” he goes on, brightening to the extent his sardonic persona allows, “Tell me what you know about poisons.”

She used to think she knew a lot. Under Gloss’ tutoring she realizes she didn’t know half as much as she should have. They teach types and effects in class, not appropriate dramatic uses.

“Datura,” Gloss says, drawing up the flower on his touchscreen, “It’s a hallucinogen before it kills. It’s unlikely that it’ll be naturally growing, but if you make the right kind of demonstration at the testing they’ll put it there. They’ll give you anything you want, actually, as long as you show them how you’ll make it memorable. I got my snares that way. Make them want to give you what you need, and you’ll have it. This plant in particular is good for when you want to make the Capitol dislike your opponent—it’s a slow, unpleasant death that tends to have them saying a lot of unpleasant things.”

Onyx trained for this, but only among an array of other possibilities. She knew, of course, ever since she turned thirteen and failed to keep growing, failed to be coaxed with injections, that stealth and subtlety were going to have to be what she did. But what she loves is hand-to-hand combat, the snap-kick of her knee into someone’s liver, her hardened little hands dissecting the weak places on a person and making even the biggest obstacles into jelly. She is _amazing_ at that, she’s a blur of violence and precision that’s lovely and brutal.

It doesn’t come up. He tells her to do gymnastics and snares and edible plants. To stick to weapons like the blowgun and throwing knives. She locks it all in her flawless memory and nods, smiles. Onyx is old enough to know that the things she loves have no capacity to save her, and that it’s all well and good to be lethal with her bare hands before some idiot outer District scoops up a mace. Direct fighting isn’t her game.

By the time they let her go to bed she’s synthesized all the slightly different things people have asked her to be into one pleasing whole. She _is_ cute and young-looking, selected this year to show up the story of the plain-faced boy from Two. Onyx doesn’t need to say she wants a family when everyone will be already aching with wanting to adopt her (or touch her) themselves. She’s here to take the bite out of District One’s image with her delicate heart-shaped face and little girl voice. She’s here to make the selective markets of the Capitol salivate at her apparent innocence and contrasting cleverness. Onyx can be all of these things at the same time. She has to be.

She doesn’t take the rose quartz off when they send her to bed. Instead, she waits for the buzz of their mentors to filter out, and sheds her heels so she can walk to Diamond’s room in silence.

He’s not pretending to be sleep either. They both know where their mentors have gone for the night, and they’re grateful first for their sacrifice—and second for the chance it gives them to be alone.

“Cashmere was drunk the whole time,” he tells her, while she rests her head in his lap, “I mean, completely gone. If it wasn’t alcohol it was—something.”

“They want me to be cute,” she says, eyes closed while he brushes her complex hair out, “Cute. Can you believe that? _Me._ ”

“You are adorable,” Diamond teases, and she flashes him a look to demonstrate that she’s not joking. “Oh, calm down. That’s just for a few days. When we’re in the arena I expect you to back me up. They can’t yell at you there.”

“Sure. Just not send me anything.”

“All right—first of all, we’re going to control the Cornucopia, so you’re not going to need anything. Secondly, if they’re filling you up with poisons they have to expect that you’ll turn in the arena. Give them time. This is the first day.” Diamond sits her up and Onyx pulls her robe close around her. He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand, and that inability bruises her, but only a little.

“I’m going to bed,” she says.

Onyx dropped Gleam’s token out of a tiny gap in an open window on the train. She didn’t need to look at it after he already told her what it was, and she didn’t need a robin’s blue following her around in the Capitol. 

So it’s not like she has anything sentimental to linger over. Her earrings are neatly encased in a box on the far side of the room from where she’s supposed to be sleeping. But the porous delicacy of the shell lingers on her. The memory smells like molding hay and the sharp tang of new rubber boots. Her favorite color is still green. 

When she does sleep it’s to these thoughts.

****

***

In the morning she forgets Gleam entirely. Their stylists dress them both in flawless white; her costume suggests a very short dress coupled with leggings, with a delicate scoopneck. Diamond is wearing an angular, structured affair, a high collar and his choker shining at his throat. Onyx has her crystal studs in her ears and makes an effort to keep them flashing and bright.

As her prep team dresses her Onyx reminds herself that these things could save her life, and that gives her the motivation to smile brightly and make small talk. The prep team like to talk about District One luxuries almost as much as their parties, and Onyx can handle that. They feather out her eyelashes and stain her mouth with pink tones. When she waits in the lobby with Diamond for the other Careers they’re both heartbreaking in their beauty. 

“Gladius, Sillar, Drift, Aileen,” she murmurs, more for her benefit than his.

“Tell me if any of the boys are queer.” Diamond nudges her. “Or if the girls like boys. Can you suss that out on the first day?”

“Yes.” Onyx barely refrains from digging an elbow into his side, because of _course_ she can. 

The elevator dings, and as soon as it opens from the second floor—

“Hi!” Onyx bounces enthusiastically across the lobby to greet their short-term allies, eyes bright and voice high. She sounds like a perfect airy idiot, she’s pleased to note. “I’m Onyx! This is Diamond. We’re just waiting for Four now, I guess! Fishpeople, right?”

“You don’t waste a lot of time,” Gladius rumbles, surprised but—and she remembers this—pleased. “Fishermen. That’s the word.”

“Oh, right,” Onyx says, as if it doesn’t matter, and she turns to Sillar, “Is that your natural color?”

“Yeah.” Sillar tilts her head at Onyx, just enough to show that she’s not buying in. 

“It’s perfect for you.” Onyx beams back at her.

“I’m sorry about my District Partner,” Diamond interjects, smoothly, “She’s very young.”

“I am not!” Onyx protests, indignant.

“Ony, really,” he chides, and his shortening of her name is just right. 

“Diamond, please.” Onyx leans against his arm after swirling back, pitching her voice a little lower. “I’m really trying.”

He slings his arm loosely around her shoulders before the Fours arrive, and makes a point of squeezing her slightly closer when they do. It’s a good set-up, she thinks. Not particularly original or dramatic, but Onyx can bring that in the Arena. The point is to be underestimated now. She has to remember that, instead of thinking of breaking the Four Boy’s wrist for how he rolls his eyes at her.

Everyone thinks District One only wins accidentally or by unexpected skill or by treachery. They’re better off that way.

They have the gymnasium all to themselves at first. Onyx wonders why the other mentors haven’t woken their Tributes by seven in the morning; it seems extravagant to let them sleep in that long. Didn’t they rest at all on the train?

Onyx heads for the light weapons with unerring energy, trying to look as brightly happy as she can. Joy is rare here; people look for smugness and ignore childishness.

She dries her hands delicately on the closest towel and trails her fingers over the knives, humming quietly to herself as she pulls one after another and weighs them. The judges proper aren’t here yet, not anywhere near here this early, but all those eyes are on her already. The second-lightest knives suit her best, so she entertains herself for a while by hurling them into the targets—with a little giggle every time she hits dead center.

A small knife—like one for paring fruit—fits neatly down the front of her cleavage. No one stops her from walking away with it, and she smiles sweetly at every trainer she passes on the way to the snare station. The other Careers must spend all their time on weapons to make a point, but Onyx has a little more flexibility. 

Snares aren’t hard. Nothing, she thinks, looking around her as the other Districts filter in, seems to be hard. All of this training feels a little lost on her, but she has to pretend that it matters beyond sounding out her likely opponents. 

It’s always seemed unfair to her, in a way. She and the other Careers have three days to show off and polish a little. The other competitors get three days to learn anything at all. Johanna Mason might have won three years ago, but she walked in knowing her angle. No defenseless, unlearned person ever wins. Luck can only take someone so far.

It’s unfair, but if the other Districts really _cared_ about their Tributes they’d train them too, and that’s what Onyx can’t understand. It’s not the fault of the people she’s going to have to kill. It’s the fault of their lazy, stupid Districts. All a Tribute needs in a single year would be a light tax on every person in a District, and then none of the babies they cry for would get hurt.

When all the older Tributes were from Career Districts last year all Onyx thought about was how _selfish_ someone would have to be to let all those children die. She knows her odds aren’t good, all on her own. She still volunteered because it was the right thing to do. 

District Eight’s shows up in the middle of her fifth snare.


End file.
